The New Recruit
by VEKTOR
Summary: New recruits were always a bit more green than the Marine Corps would have liked them to be.  But clearly this was no new "recruit". She was trained, and she was ready. For something we didn't even know existed.   Nova, non-canon story .


**This is the first fanfiction I've ever uploaded. I've written others, but it's just a crazy crossover between every game and movie character ever. Think of it like Smash Bros, but with movies too. I do not own StarCraft, Blizzard Entertainment does. I do play the game a lot though :). Even though I'm not very good, I still love it. Any feedback, is always good. Flame me, whatever :)**

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"I love the smell of wreckage in the morning!", said the Siege Tank pilot next to me. The hulking mammoth of a vehicle spouted Vespene fumes and the sounds of grinding gears as the sun set on Korhal. The Zerg would attempt to attack us again, they did that every night. At nighttime we would try to defend against the swarms of Infected Terrans, our comrades' minds twisted by the Zerg evolutionary virus and made their own. Our fragile bunkers wouldn't really protect against anything, but it was comforting to know that with their Neosteel Frame upgrades they could hold 6 of us instead of 4. I thank the commander for ordering an Engineering Bay to be built as I shiver and anticipate the sounds of the rumbling earth: the telltale sign that the Zerg were unburrowing. I threw my cigar onto the ground and crushed it with my metal-covered boot. I was just one Marine. One guy. What could I do against this biological menace?

Joe, next to me said, "By the numbers, boys..", encouraging us all. It was true, we did have strength in numbers. And if things got too dicey we might just go crazy and shoot up some Stims. But the Zerg's advantage was that they had numbers. How the commander wanted to survive off of one base and one base only was beyond me. The Zerg had already expanded twice, growing like a parasitic cancer and taking over every mineral field on the planet. They were moving in on Braxis, and I saw the explosions in the background, our outposts being destroyed by the unrelenting Zerg. It was unfair. But if we didn't do it, our country, our humanity would suffer the same fate. We had to fight. There was no other way.

I looked over at Joe again, who had clearly Stimmed up judging by his abnormally wide pupils.  
He said "All right, boys and girls! Now the crunchers are gonna hit us, and they're gonna hit us hard. On my count, you all Stim. I know you don't like them needles, but you're going to have to do as I say. Better all of us get our lifespan shortened by 25 percent than all of us die, right?"

As uneasy we all were, we agreed with him. He was the only Marine here who could even pretend to have any kind of authority. We instinctively listened to him, ever since our first battle together. Today, however, a new recruit was coming to our installation, or that's what we were told anyway. We had to hold out until he arrived. The Zerg unburrowed 100 miles in front of us and they were many. We knew they were coming. We didn't know how. A creature I'd never seen before started charging at us. There was only one. As if the Zerg wanted to show us what was in store, because they clearly had at least 40 more of them, lurking beneath the surface of the mud-covered ground. It... looked like a Hydralisk, attacked like it too. It had some nice range on it. I was surprised that I was giving my opponent, my mortal enemy such great respect. But it wasn't a Hydra. No.. it was something different. Weaker, lower down the Zerg's military ranking, but still pretty strong. Carlos managed to blow off one of its legs, and I thought that was it.

I couldn't have been more wrong. It started burrowing under the ground, and Joe knew it was finished anyway, so he walked up to the small crater it created in the earth. He kicked at it a bit, fired a few shots into the ground, even though he didn't know where it was. Even if it popped up, it's not like it was going to be healed or anything... right? Wrong. It churned up earth, standing tall and proud almost... on its brand new left leg which had been reconstructed. I had heard the rumors. Roaches, they called 'em. But I never believed it. It was impossible. And yet the impossible thing was killing the only hope we had to win this battle. Joe was gone. His blood soaked the ground and the Roach burrowed again, bathing in the red life-liquid of our friend, gloating in its victory. more than a thousand Zerg forces unburrowed 200 miles away from our position, Artillery saw them. It was over. But just as we thought we were all going to die, a mushroom-cloud of Terrazine and Uranium burnt all life near the Zerg's last known location to a crisp. Of our adversary, nothing remained but ashes. It was over. We had won.

Behind us, though, something was beginning. A new trust. Joe was dead, and we needed a leader to hold our heads high at this point. A figure uncloaked, brandishing her canister rifle with underslung Nuclear Designator and walked slowly toward us, as if she knew that there was nothing to be afraid of anymore. She had long blond hair tied in a pony-tail and wore the skin-tight suit of a specialized Ghost operative. Her armor designated her as a Lieutenant in the general's army. New recruit, my ass. She took a stance, almost striking a pose and called out, "Hiya, there, gentlemen. My name's Nova. You all take orders from me now, got it?"

We got it. And as much as we didn't want to think about someone replacing Joe, we needed her. Just as some day, in an all out-attempt against the Protoss, she would need us. But for now, we did take orders from her. And we took them well. After the inclusion of Nova in our squad, we had 17 successful missions in a row... until those High Templar crackheads decided to smack us around again... this time, on a planet we all thought was gone. This time, on a place where they would have the higher ground. This time, on a world called Bel'Shir.


End file.
